Genesis

Cook's Genesis (New Collegeville Bible Commentary, 2011) is a readable popular-level introduction, but it is marred by serious problems that limit its reliability. It presents the Documentary Hypothesis in its classical Wellhausenian form as settled fact, without acknowledging that the consensus has collapsed even within critical scholarship. More troubling are several derogatory characterizations of God: Cain's rejected offering is described as "troubling" and seemingly evidence that "God plays favorites" — ignoring the text's own distinction between Abel's choicest firstlings and Cain's unqualified produce; God's response at Babel is framed as a defensive move to avoid "a recurrence of chaos," implying an anxious, reactive deity; the flood narrative says God's grief "announces God's realization that something is out of place," the word "realization" implying prior ignorance; and Abraham is said to "persuade the Lord to think again about this plan that is out of character for the Deity" at Sodom, suggesting God required human moral correction. Additional unusual positions include the claim that Melchizedek's "God Most High" was "the chief deity among the Canaanite gods" — ignoring Abram's own identification of El Elyon with Yahweh in the very next verse — and the assertion that identifying Dinah as Leah's daughter "casts her in a negative light," a reading unsupported by any major commentary. The volume also contains a notable logical inconsistency, praising Abraham's silence as obedience in earlier chapters while calling his silence before God in Genesis 22 "problematic." Readers wanting an accessible Catholic commentary on Genesis would be better served elsewhere.

It is a short and very useful Commentary of Genesis. I really want to read it.